|
By the time I got around to coloring in the right side of
the map, I was tired. I'd been working on it for a couple
of days, and my hand was sore and my head was starting to
hurt from all the focused concentration. I left the entire
northern continent empty, gave myself a few signs of exploration
on the isthmus between the continents and on the little continent
at the bottom left, and claimed a peninsula (previous map)
for the folks I decided were the main characters in the first
book. And I marked the badly blasted areas on the right below
in that teal-green that I'd determined meant the area had
been explored but remained unclaimed. I didn't know what I
was going to do with that then -- it was just there for my
use later. There are hundreds of details in the three sections
of map that you've looked at that didn't show up in the first
book, and most of those won't even show up in the first series.
But right now, while I'm waiting for my editor's request for
revisions on the second book, and before I can really
sink my teeth into writing the final book of THE SECRET TEXTS,
I'm looking at those details, and doing some more background,
and that teal "unclaimed" region on the continent of North
Novtierra is calling to me. I want to be able to submit
a proposal for either another series or another book
when I've finished the last of these, and I'm starting to
think about what it's going to be about now. I want to
drop back a thousand years to the story of those holes and
how they got there -- that's a big, sweeping story. And I
also want to know why someone would explore a huge expanse
of a brand new continent, then turn around and run back home,
saying "Nope. Don't want that." People are pretty big on claiming
land, after all. So what did they find? How bad was
it? What did it think of them? And most importantly, what
has it been doing since they left?
I'm not sure where I'm going next, but it will start with
this map. Stay tuned . . .
|
 |
